How much cards are worth in blackjack

Even a quick look at the rules of blackjack makes the main thing clear: your job is to reach 21, ideally on two cards. Card values seem about as simple as it gets, and yet there are nuances worth going into in more detail. If you’re just learning the rules or haven’t spent much time at the table yet, this breakdown will help put everything in its place.

Card values: the base values of every card

For anyone starting from the very basics, let’s begin with a table of card values.

Card values in blackjack are always the same: the value doesn’t depend on the rule variant, the number of decks or the specific table. The conditions of play change — but not what each card is worth.

Important: you only need to remember three things — number cards are worth their face value, all face cards and the ten are worth 10, and the ace is flexible (1 or 11). Every bit of strategy from here builds on those values.

10-value cards: ten, jack, queen, king

The deck holds more 10-value cards than any other: the ten, jack, queen and king. In a regular game — without specific side bets, i.e. additional bets¹, which aren’t offered at every table — their value to the player is identical. And all the ten-value cards are very useful:

• paired with an ace, such a card makes the combination known as a natural blackjack — 21 on two cards, the strongest hand², which under most rule variants loses to nothing and means a 3:2 payout³;
• two 10-value cards (and there are 16 in a 52-card deck — so they turn up as a pair fairly often) add up to 20, also a very strong hand.

The abundance of valuable 10-value cards directly affects card counting, but we’ll get to that below.

Important: the face cards (jack, queen, king) and the ten are entirely equal for the main bet — they all add exactly 10 to the hand. No king is ‘stronger’ than a queen until rare side bets come into it.

The ace — the most special card

In blackjack only one card has a floating value, and for the player that’s not a drawback but the opposite — an advantage that lets you make the most of whatever lands in your hand.

1 or 11: soft and hard hands

The ace can be worth 1 point or 11, and the player holding the hand decides how to count it — it all depends on what’s more favourable. An ace and a seven, for instance, can be treated as either 8 or soft 18 (soft 18)⁴; 8 does you no good at all, but on soft 18 there are several options:

1. if the dealer’s upcard (upcard — the first card they show) is worth 9–11, you can still lose with 18, so you hit, knowing that on a ‘bust’ the ace drops to 1 and the hand simply turns hard;
2. if the dealer’s card is a 2, 7 or 8, they’ll very likely either fall short of 18 or bust, so you’re better off not taking more cards;
3. if the dealer’s upcard is worth 3 to 6, the dealer is at their weakest and busts most often — here it’s wise to double your bet⁵ and get more money on the table while the odds are on your side.

It’s also important to understand how the dealer plays: they always stand on 17 to avoid a bust, but the question is whether they’ll stop on soft 17, since one extra card can’t bust them there. The ace is worth 1 or 11 in the dealer’s hand too; what the table rules spell out is the soft-17 rule: if the dealer stands on soft 17 (S17), that’s a plus for you — the dealer stays on a weak 17 instead of trying to improve it. If the dealer hits soft 17 (H17), the house edge rises by about 0.2%.

Natural blackjack

The ace is valuable, too, because without it you can’t make the most profitable combination — a natural blackjack, i.e. 21 on two cards. Given what the king, queen, jack and ten are worth, an ace paired with any of the 16 ten-value cards (in a full deck) forms the best hand there is, one that beats even a 21 built from more cards. The payout for a natural blackjack is 3:2 (sometimes 6:5) — the only bet (apart from the rare, always unfavourable side bets) where the win is larger than the stake itself.

Important: a 6:5 payout instead of 3:2 looks almost the same, but noticeably trims your profit on every blackjack. Check the wording on the felt before you sit down.

Splitting aces

Two aces in one hand is an uncommon situation, but a possible one; technically it’s 2 or 12, yet it’s far wiser to split such a hand — match your bet and effectively play two hands, each holding an ace. That way a technically poor hand turns into two good ones: each hand starts from a strong 11. Bear in mind that a ten on a split ace makes an ordinary 21 paid 1:1, not a natural blackjack, and most tables deal just one card to each split ace. The dealer never splits, so for them a pair of aces is more of a problem. Re-splitting is often restricted too: in one popular variant — Atlantic City Blackjack — aces may be split only once (one card each), with no re-splitting. Similar limits apply at many other tables that don’t mention Atlantic City in the name, so before you start, be sure to study the detailed rules of the specific table.

Insurance on a dealer’s ace

Bets beyond the main one in blackjack are usually a rarity, available only at a handful of specific tables; the one exception is insurance against a dealer blackjack (Insurance), which is offered everywhere. Here’s how it works: if the dealer’s upcard is an ace (a natural blackjack is possible), you can immediately make an insurance bet of up to half the main stake and, if the dealer really does have a natural blackjack, you’re paid 2:1 on the insurance. The main bet against a natural blackjack usually loses — so the insurance payout covers the loss and gets you back to even.

Experienced players generally don’t take insurance: the insurance bet itself carries a house edge of about 7.4% (an RTP of about 92.6%), and taking it every time lifts the overall edge from about 0.5% (basic strategy, no insurance) to about 0.8%. The maths is this: in six-deck blackjack with a full shoe, the probability of a 10 to go with the dealer’s ace is 30.87%, so it happens less than one time in three; given the 2:1 payout, insurance would only make sense if the dealer made natural blackjacks 33.3% of the time or more. In practice, skilled card counters do take insurance — but only when the shoe (the remaining cards) is heavily weighted towards high cards, because a big run of low cards has gone into the discards.

Hi-Lo / counting: card values in the count

There are several card-counting systems, but the simplest — and therefore the most popular — is the Hi-Lo system. You don’t have to memorise the suits of the discarded cards, or even their exact rank: starting from zero, you simply add or subtract points for each card that goes into the discards.

A big positive count means the shoe is now rich in high cards — you’ll more often make, if not natural blackjacks, then at least strong hands like 20; in that case it’s wise to raise your bets. Conversely, a negative count tells you there are fewer tens, jacks, queens and kings in the shoe, a natural blackjack paying 3:2 is unlikely, and so your bets are better lowered — sometimes it’s a signal to end the session altogether.

We mentioned above that insurance against a dealer blackjack sometimes becomes worthwhile: that happens when the count shows lots of tens, jacks, queens and kings left in the shoe, since they’re then more likely to land alongside the dealer’s ace. So on a high positive count, an Insurance bet can turn out to be justified.

Important: here we’ve only touched on the basics of counting — at a minimum you also need to adjust for the number of decks. Our site has a separate, detailed piece on how to count cards — be sure to read it.

Card draw probabilities

The number of decks in blackjack matters for card counting and directly affects the probability of certain cards coming out once the round is underway and some cards have gone into the discards. But the first card from a fresh shoe always comes out with the same probability of 1/13 — that is, 7.69%. By the same logic, above we worked out the probability of a ten-value card landing alongside the dealer’s ace — there it comes to 4/13.

Since the most valuable card for the player is still the ace, it’s natural to want to know the odds of catching one in your own hand. Here it doesn’t much matter whether the ace comes out first (the same 7.69%) — it’s enough for it to be one of the first two cards. The formula gets a bit more involved, 1 − (48/52)·(47/51), and puts the probability of an ace in two cards at 14.9%⁶. That last figure holds only for single-deck blackjack, where there are just four aces.

Basic strategy for the key hands

When you play blackjack, you shouldn’t rely on gut feeling or constant mental arithmetic: there’s what’s called basic strategy, which prescribes the play with the best expected return for every situation. It’s important to understand that basic strategy doesn’t guarantee success — it picks the play that loses least (or wins most) over the long run, not necessarily the one most likely to win that particular hand, while the final result still depends on the cards you and the dealer draw.

Basic-strategy charts let you cut the house edge dramatically (typically to about 0.5%, and at some tables even to 0.15%), but you should only use the chart whose recommended plays are calculated for your exact rule variant. Our site has detailed charts for all kinds of blackjack variants; here we show examples for a 4–8 deck game with the dealer standing on soft 17. The notation is as follows:

1. H — hit (take another card);
2. D — double down;
3. S — stand;
4. R — surrender (if the table rules allow);
5. P — split the hand.

With hard hands (either no ace at all, or one already counted as 1) we play like this.

And this is how to play soft hands, where the ace is counted as 11 for now; remember that the next card can’t bust a soft hand (after it, the hand may turn hard).

For hands that are a pair of equal-value cards, there’s a third chart — the difference being that such hands can also be split.

Dedicated players usually aim to learn the basic-strategy chart by heart, but in practice using a printed version as a prompt isn’t forbidden even at land-based casinos, where the dealer can see you — let alone online.

Footnotes

1. At some tables you’re offered unusual side bets whose payout can far exceed the standard 3:2 for a natural blackjack. A Lucky Ladies bet, for example, can pay a huge payout — typically 125:1 to 200:1 — but for that your first two cards must be a pair of queens of hearts (and with a dealer blackjack on top, some paytables pay up to 1000:1); so in a given situation a queen can turn out to be far more valuable, even though its point value hasn’t changed. ↩

2. A combination of cards held by one player. ↩

3. At some tables the payout for a natural blackjack is 6:5, but that rule is one to steer well clear of — it means you regularly give up profit. ↩

4. A ‘soft’ hand means it contains an ace that (for now at least) counts as 11; if you decide to take another card, you definitely won’t bust — if needed the ace then counts as 1, and the hand turns ‘hard’. ↩

5. Keep in mind, though, that doubling down lets you take only one additional card — no more. ↩

6. Simply multiplying 7.69% (the probability of any one card) by two is wrong, because after the first card is dealt the deck holds not 52 but only 51 cards. ↩